


Loss

by Gemmiel



Series: Touch Me [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, M/M, makoharu friendship, much angst, offscreen death of a minor character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemmiel/pseuds/Gemmiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even though Haru's lost his family, he still has Makoto. </p><p>A prequel to the "Touch Me" series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote "Teach," I wrote a description of a fairly angsty event in Haru's life from Makoto's point of view. I wanted to go back and write it out in more detail, and see what was going on in Haru's head, but I couldn't fit it into the ongoing series, so decided to make it a prelude. I'm therefore including this in the "Touch Me" series, but you can easily read it without having read any of the rest of the series. Makoharu friendship.
> 
> I am reordering the "Touch Me" series so this appears first, but it's also easily skippable for those of you who prefer to go straight to the smut.

Nanase Haruka sits alone in the gathering gloom of evening, staring at a wall. There’s nothing on the blank wall that could possibly justify the intent, steady gaze he’s giving it, but he doesn’t care. He’s not really looking at the wall, anyway. In his head, he sees his parents earlier this afternoon, giving him tight, uncomfortable smiles as they prepare to leave. Again.

“You’ll be better off here in Iwatobi,” his father is saying, his voice brisk, unemotional. “This isn’t the right time to drag you away from everything familiar to you. You’re better off here, in school with your friends.”

“Maybe…” his mother tries, her voice soft. Her voice is always soft, as if she’s afraid that anything louder might be taken as disagreement, or possibly rebellion. And his father would never put up with that. “Maybe we could stay a little longer, if you need us…”

“He doesn’t need us.” His father’s tone is dismissive, as if the idea of his sixteen-year-old son needing any sort of parental attention or care is absurd. “He’s almost grown up now. He’ll be just fine here.”

Haru nods, because his mother looks lost and miserable and he can’t bear putting her through any more pain, not when she’s just lost her own mother. As wretched as he feels at the loss of his grandmother, he knows his mother has to be feeling worse.

 _This isn’t the right time._ He thinks bitterly that as far as his father is concerned, there will never be a right time for the three of them to be a family again. He’s perfectly aware that his father is much happier with his freak son kept at a safe distance, shut away in a quiet small town, where his friends and co-workers can’t be shocked by Haru’s peculiarities. Haru has always been odd, different, _weird,_ and his father has no tolerance for oddity of any sort.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. There’s a frigid ache deep in his chest, like his heart has been encased in ice, but he manages to keep his face still and calm. He didn’t cry when he found his grandmother’s lifeless body, and he didn’t cry at her funeral. So he certainly won’t cry just because his parents are already packing to go back to the city.

“If you're sure,” his mother says, offering him a watery smile. “Just call us and let us know how you’re doing, all right, Haruka?”

He flinches at the full name. No one calls him that any more—it’s girly and embarrassing. But it doesn’t really matter what his parents call him. He gives a stiff nod, understanding that he’ll be going back to speaking to his parents once a week, for a carefully timed ten minutes, just as he has for several years now. “Of course.”

A few hours later, he sees his parents off at the train station. His father bows, cold, remote. His mother looks like she might want to hold her arms out to him, but everyone knows he’s never really liked being touched, and she hesitates. Seeing his parents leaving again makes his chest ache worse than before, and for the first time in many years he feels like a hug would be welcome. He feels like a small child again, in desperate need of comforting. But in the end, his mother only smiles at him.

“Take care, Haruka.”

“Take care,” he says, bowing to his parents like strangers.

Now he’s sitting alone in his house. Not his grandmother’s house, not any longer. His house. No one lives here but him. A wave of loneliness sweeps over him like a rising tide rushing over the beach, and he swallows hard.

“Haru-chan?”

He doesn’t turn around to see who it is. There’s no need, because he knows the voice as well as he knows his own. “Makoto,” he says.

“Hey.” Tachibana Makoto, his best friend, sounds worried. Well, that’s nothing new. Makoto is usually worried about something or other. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

Haru can hear the sound of Makoto’s big feet padding awkwardly against the matting on the floor. Anyone could hear him—his feet are bare, yet they thud against the matting as loudly as if he were wearing wooden sandals. Haru and Makoto used to be more or less the same size, but a year or so ago Makoto suddenly started shooting up, until he reached the stature of a small giant. He’s a lot bigger than Haru now, both in height and breadth, and Haru is pretty sure he’s not done yet. He hasn’t quite grown accustomed to his immense size yet, and tends to walk like an elephant on ice, tripping over nothing in particular.

“Mom sent some dinner for you,” Makoto says. “I mean, if you’re hungry.” Uncertainty colors his voice, tilting his sentences halfway into questions.

“Not hungry,” Haru says.

“Haru…” Makoto puts whatever he’s carrying down, and sits down beside the smaller boy, with all the grace of an ox. _Thud._ “Listen, I know you were kind of hoping your parents would stay…”

“I knew they wouldn’t.”

“I don’t know. I thought they might…”

“They have to get back to work.” Haru hears the bitterness coloring his own voice, and hates it. He wants to maintain his cool, indifferent façade, but for some reason he’s having trouble hanging onto it. “They have important things to do in the city.”

“Well, then, they should’ve taken you along!” Makoto’s voice, recently steadied into a light and pleasant tenor, cracks, momentarily squeaking upward into the soprano range. “I mean, they’re your _parents,_ Haru.”

That’s the thing, though. They aren’t his parents, not really. Not like Makoto’s parents, who take care of their son and cook for him and kiss him good night even when he claims to be too old, who cheer him on at swim meets and listen to music with him and take him fishing on weekends.

Makoto has a mom and dad. He just has two strangers he talks to once a week.

“It’s all right,” he says, still staring steadily at the wall. “Everything’s fine, Makoto.”

Makoto heaves a sigh. It’s obvious he isn’t buying the _I’m-perfectly-fine-everything-is-okay_ crap that Haru is spewing, but he seems disinclined to argue about it. Which figures, because Makoto never argues.

“I’m sleeping over,” he says instead. “Mom said I could.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. But I want to.”

For the first time today, Haru feels a small warmth glow inside his chest. It isn’t enough to melt the icy ache, but it helps a little.

“Okay,” he says.

*****

Makoto talks Haru into trying to sleep an hour or so later, and Haru is slightly surprised when the larger boy stretches out in bed right next to him. It’s not like they haven’t shared a bed before. When they were kids, they slept in each other’s beds all the time. Recently, they’ve quit doing it, just like they’ve stopped holding hands in public. They’re almost grown up now, and so they’ve had to quit doing kid stuff.

But tonight, Haru is grateful to have Makoto’s warm bulk so close. He isn’t sure why, but it’s incredibly comforting to know that Makoto is right next to him. This house has seemed so terribly empty since his grandmother died. He thinks about her with a pang of longing-- the sound of her voice saying his name, the way she smiled at him in the afternoons when he came home from school, the way she indulged him by cooking him mackerel for breakfast, even when she didn’t much care for it herself. He lies there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, and lets himself remember.

It occurs to him that now she’s in the darkness, too.

He hasn’t let himself think about it until now, hasn’t wanted to think about what death might really mean. But he thinks about it now, and decides that his first idea was a silly, childish way of thinking about it. He doesn’t believe in an afterlife or spirits, so he’s sure she’s not trapped in the darkness beyond life, fighting to get out, struggling to get back to him. She’s not anything at all. She’s just… not.

That isn’t particularly comforting, and the dreadful reality of a world without his grandmother in it suddenly descends upon him with awful force. She’s gone, and he’ll never see her again—not in the flesh, not as a spirit, not even after he himself dies. She’s _gone._

He swallows hard, remembering watching his parents leave him at the train station this afternoon. He wishes his mother had hugged him. He wishes he could have cried into her shoulder and let her comfort him.

Which is stupid. He’s sixteen. He’s too damn old to cry. He can’t help hearing an echo of his father’s voice: _You’re too old to cry, Haruka. Stop this childishness at once. You’re embarrassing us._

He remembers the day his father told him that. He’d wanted to swim in the ocean in October, and his mother had gently and sensibly discouraged him. He’d been eight and desperately in love with the water, and he’d cried pitifully, but his father had only scowled.

_You’re too old to cry, Haruka._

Well, if he’d been too old to cry at eight, he’s certainly too old now. He swallows the tears that threaten, desperately gulping back the salt water that seems to be gathering at the back of his throat, threatening to drown him.

“Haru,” Makoto says. His voice is very gentle, sympathetic, _kind._ He reaches over, wrapping an arm around Haru, his big body pressing closer.

Haru wants to be brave, to get through this without showing any emotion, the way his father would expect him to. But he’s been deprived of human comfort for too long, and Makoto’s kindness is too much for him. The frozen ache that’s been growing inside his chest, ever since the morning he found his grandmother’s lifeless body in the garden, shatters into a million pieces with shocking suddenness, like a piece of ice flung hard against a boulder.

He hears a terrible sound rip itself from his throat, an inhuman noise of grief and pain and sorrow. He rolls toward Makoto, burying his face in his broad shoulder, and tries to stifle the next sob, but it’s just as loud and anguished as the first one was.

“Haru-chan.” Makoto sounds like he might be on the verge of crying, too. His big hand lifts to Haru’s hair, stroking it as if Haru’s a little child, and his other arm tightens around him, pulling him closer, cradling him.

Haru can’t hold back his grief any longer. He wails into Makoto’s shoulder, weeping for the loss of his grandmother, and for the parents that don’t love him enough to be with him, even when he needs them most. He knows now that he’ll never have a proper family again, that if his parents wouldn’t stay with him through this crisis, they simply don’t care enough to stay with him at all. He’s all alone, and he’s barely sixteen, and he’s scared and hurt and lonely.

“Haru-chan,” Makoto says again. His hand is gentle against Haru’s hair, and he feels big and strong and warm, and Haru thinks miserably that even if he has no one else to lean on, no family he can turn to, at least he has Makoto. At least he can trust his friend to always be there for him.

“Mako-chan.” He’s sobbing so hard he can hardly form words. “I want—I want—“

_I want my grandmother back. I want my mother. I want a real family._

He’s too strangled by grief to say any of it, but maybe he doesn’t really need to, because Makoto is stroking his hair gently. “I know,” he says, and Haru is sure that he really does understand, that he shares Haru’s grief, his anger at the unfairness of the world that takes loved ones away so abruptly, and his bitterness at the impossible coldness of grown-ups who leave children to suffer on their own. “I know, Haru-chan. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Haru ought to feel embarrassed that he’s clinging to his best friend, wailing into his shoulder. He, of all people—the guy who prides himself on never reacting to anything. The guy that people describe as _emotionless. Cold. Robotic._ He knows that Makoto has never thought he was any of those things, that Makoto has never once been fooled by his cool, expressionless demeanor, but he’s never let Makoto see him like this before, either.

He’s grateful, immensely grateful, that Makoto is willing to let him indulge in the grief that’s been choking him for days. He’s not sure he could have survived this loss otherwise.

He sobs for the better part of half an hour, while Makoto strokes his hair and whispers _Haru-chan, I’m so sorry, shhhh, Haru-chan._ At last his sobs die to gasps and pitiful little whimpers. He knows he’s made a snotty, wet mess of Makoto’s t-shirt, but disgusting though that must be, his friend doesn’t seem inclined to push him away. His arms are a warm and comforting circle around Haru, a strong, impenetrable shield protecting him against the outside world.

When Haru’s grief is reduced to sniffles, Makoto lets go of him and wanders off in the dark, and a moment later returns with a handful of tissues. “Blow,” he says.

Haru obediently blows his nose, but it doesn’t do much good. He’s stuffy and too hot, and his head hurts. But the ache in his chest has eased a little, and for that he’s grateful.

“You don’t have to stay,” he mutters. His voice is hoarse.

“I want to stay,” Makoto answers. He liberates the snotty tissues and tosses them in a nearby trashcan, then climbs back into bed with Haru. His arms go around the smaller boy again, and Haru can’t seem to stop himself from pressing up against him. Makoto is warm and solid and infinitely reassuring, and Haru discovers that his eyelids feel heavy.

“’m sleepy,” he says, yawning.

“I bet you haven’t slept right in days.”

It’s amazing how well Makoto knows him. “Hardly slept at all,” he admits.

“Well, then, go to sleep. I’ll still be here in the morning, Haru-chan.”

 _Leave off the –chan,_ Haru almost says, but bites back the words. Tonight, he figures, when it’s just the two of them, it’s okay to be Haru-chan. It’s more than okay, really, because Makoto doesn’t mind if he cries. Makoto doesn’t see it as childishness, the way his father would, but as perfectly understandable grief. Makoto, he thinks, isn’t ever embarrassed by him. Makoto’s okay with him the way he is, whether that way is cool and unemotional, or crying his eyes out.

Makoto accepts him the way he is. Makoto knows everything there is to know about him, and understands him. Haru trusts Makoto to accept him, to understand him, like no one else does. And for the first time since his grandmother died, Haru finds himself falling quietly and easily into a deep sleep.

Because he knows that Makoto is there to watch over him.


End file.
